The Ideological Foundation of Literary Evolution in Hu Shi’s Translation Activities

Hu Shi applies the theory of evolution into the domain of literature and takes literary evolution as the core of his literary revolution. Literary evolution brings him a historical view to look into Chinese and western literature. He advocates to learn from the much more advanced western literature to reform the traditional Chinese literature and develop New Literature. Literary evolution view penetrates his translation activities. As for translation language, Hu Shi firmly holds to take the more advanced vernacular Chinese instead of the lifeless classical Chinese. While in selecting the works to translate, he favors those which either contain such enlightening and progressive ideas as pursuing human and individual liberation, or present new literary forms filling voids in Chinese literature at that time. He hopes these works can be translated as models for Chinese New literature, which is still at its initial stage. Through translation, Hu Shi performs an all-round innovation of traditional Chinese literature in language, themes and forms, and accelerates the transition of traditional Chinese literature to modern literature.